I had very rewarding evening of tea and conversation with Jessa (aka chief editor at Bookslut) last night. Hurrah for rambling conversations!

Somewhere in between discussing what exactly is wrong with Michael Moore and how television shows that are any good tend to be either renewed-but-ruined or permanently cancelled after the first season, we got on the subject of the last presidential election, and the next one.

Jessa's dream race for the last election&#8212and I must say I concur&#8212would have pitted John McCain for the Republicans against Bill Bradley for the Democrats. Imagine that&#8212a choice that might have required pausing for more than 2 seconds to think about it!

One can always hold out hope for some future election, I suppose. My dream race for 2004 looks something like this:

Republicans - Bush / Powell
Let's be realistic about 2 things here: Dick Cheney is not long for this world, and there's not a woman's chance with Ian McKellen of anyone wresting the Republican nomination away from Bush. Under the circumstances, Bush / Powell is the best I can hope for.

Democrats - McCain / Feingold
McCain leaves the Republican party, Jeffords-style, and runs a clean, honest, reform campaign with Democrat finance-reform-law buddy Feingold. Lieberman and Gore either have the good sense to stay out of the race, or else get sand kicked in their faces by McCain in the primary.

Greens - Bradley / Nader
Bradley, meanwhile, leaves the Democrats and endorses the Green party platform plank, board and nail. Nader, who I've never liked nearly as much as I like the Greens' platform, comes along for the ride to avoid thoroughly alienating all those who went with him for the Greens in the last 2 elections, but Bradley is in the seat that counts.

Is it wishful thinking? Probably so. But I think these tickets are at least plausible.

Speak up! What does your dream race for 2004 look like? Who would you vote for in your theoretical dream campaign, or in mine?

The latest incarnation of the U.S. dollar coin, the Sacagawea golden dollar, is a limited, highly qualified, modest success. Or, more accurately, a non-failure at best.

Chalk this up to the Treasury Department's policy of co-circulation, the same policy that killed all previous attempts at introducing a dollar coin (the "silver dollar" and Susan B. Anthony dollars, for example). We could take a lesson from our neighbors to the north in Canada, and make the wise move of phasing out the paper dollar, but I have a better idea -- a plan to increase circulation of the dollar coin and simultaneously reform the funding of elections...

Require all private funding of election campaigns, whether hard money or soft money, to be paid in Sacagawea dollars. No checks, no paper bills, no stock certificates or donations in kind. Elections are publicly funded, unless you want to go to the considerable effort of amassing and transporting 1 million coins to the candidate of your choice, who then has similar difficulties in spending them.

It's an idea whose time has come. Exercise your so-called "free speech" right to give money to politicians all you want -- the only requirement is that the lingua franca of that speech must be unwieldy dollar coins!

With a little luck, maybe some of the greedier corporate CEOs will meet interesting ends, crushed under the weight of their own influence-purchasing donations. Wouldn't that be a refreshing change in the headlines from all of these depressing Enron dispatches?